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Guest reviewby Gaynor, Northampton

I booked a table at Cardomon City one recent Saturday night to celebrate my 41st birthday. It was for myself and eight female friends at 9pm. I booked by phone about two weeks ahead but, when we arrived at 8.10pm we were told my booking was 'not on the system'. The young lady who greeted us was polite and said she would speak to the manager and come and find us in the bar downstairs. A few minutes later she appeared and said that we could be fitted in at 9.30pm. I said that would be OK but that given the mistake could they do something for us for example a drink each on the house? She said yes she would sort something out.

Sadly things went downhill from there. At 9.35pm I went to find her and was told it would be a few more minutes. At 9.45pm we decided to go upstairs to the restaurant as we were getting pretty hungry. We were then shown to a table meant to seat eight so five of us were very cosy on one side. There were five menus, eight popadoms, and four forks between us. The black menus with dark orange writing would have been a challenge to read in any event but the dire lighting (each trendy curly chromed wire light fitting bore only one or two functioning bulbs) made it near impossible. After 20 minutes nobody had taken a drinks order from us nor had anything compensatory arrived. Two friends asked to speak to the manager. To cut a long story short, nobody who seemed to be in charge came to speak to us. The attitude of the waiter who did come over was poor.

We decided to leave. On the way out the doorman who handed us back our coats asked if we'd had a good meal - when he was told what had happened he said sorry - a first for the night. Things do sometimes go wrong with restaurant bookings for whatever reason but if it is handled properly it needn't be the negative experience it was in this case. Obviously I am unable to comment on the food other than the popadoms and pickles which were fine but by then we were so hungry we would probably have eaten a paper plate with mango chutney on it! Needless to say I would not go back and would not recommend this restaurant.